Designer Grace Smith launched a new series today, focused on Mac OS X productivity hints and suggestions.
Part One gets inside QuickSilver and Spotlight before parts two and three discuss Applications, Spaces and the Dock. So make sure you are subscribed so as not to miss out when these are published over the next two weeks.
This is a great post, so be sure to check it out!
My friend Patrick Rhone, on his new blog Practical Opacity, recommended a great article about Super Simple Month. It’s a fantastic concept, and I’ve just got to pass it along to you.
Unclutter your life today. You’ll be glad you did.
Most people primarily use computers at work. Whether it’s because of their IT department, their corporate software needs or the personal preference of the CEO/Owner/President of the company, the computer of choice for most businesses is a Window powered PC. And when these people drive home from work, they need something to use in their personal life as well. And most people (though the tide is slowly shifting) opt for another Windows box.
So in a sense, the business world drives the choices in the personal-use computer industry. But what these people end up buying is really more than they need. Most people who work outside the home use their at-home personal computer for very few things: internet browsing, email communication, social networking sites, a money management program, and for purchasing and consuming their media (photos, music and movies).
It’s interesting to think about, really. The computer as we know it has a split personality. Core elements are incredibly personal and non-professional, while other functionality is incredibly business-oriented. How many accountants in a corporate setting really use their “My Music” and “My Photos” folders on their Windows machines? And at home on their personal computer, how many owners have intricate filling systems, external hard drives or detailed spread sheets? Not many.
Sure, there’s a small number of people who can’t separate their work and personal computer experience. I’m a graphic designer who works for myself from a home office, so it’s harder for me to “leave work” and switch my mind to a “home” mode. But for most people, after working on a computer all day, commuting home for an hour, rushing through dinner and putting the kids to bed, the last thing they want to do is sit down to a home computer and see the same interface, fish through the same folder structure, and fight the same system notifications that pop up.
Most consumers want something different. They want a computer they can call “home”. Sure, they want it to hold everything they put on their current computers (photos, music, etc) but without the complexity that reminds them of work. It needs to be easy to use – enjoyable in fact- and portable. Consumers today value beauty and design (read Daniel Pink’s fantastic book ‘A Whole New Mind’ for more on that topic) and simplicity.
The iPad, at its core, is the home computer for people who want their personal life to be enjoyable. It’s not an enterprise device, or a mobile office. It’s not a replacement for your laptop (unless your only home PC is a home-based laptop) or a designer’s Wacom replacement. It’s the first computer.
With the release of the iPad this past week, Apple is changing the computer metaphor we have known for decades.
The model for interaction that many people take for granted is based on the office. There’s a desk on top of which you keep those things you need most frequently or currently, otherwise known as a “desktop.” There’s a filing system where you organize all your documents in folders within folders. There’s even a trash can within reach where you can toss the things you don’t need anymore.
The “windowed” UI experience is not found on the iPad. Instead, we have a “home button” that takes us to our “home screen”. And on that level of interaction is everything we need. If I want to access the word processing document I’ve been working on, I open the application I created it in, and the document is stored within. Focus shifts from managing files and clutter to enjoying music and photos and video. And all of this can be “locked up” when we need to leave.
The computer metaphor is changing. It used to mirror our office. Now it mirrors our home.
My good friend Kyle Baxter posted a great commentary on the recent Steve Jobs quote that hit the internet this weekend. Jobs was quoted by numerous independent sources as stating about the mystery product Apple is poised to release this Wednesday that it is “the most important thing he has ever done.”
Kyle makes some really good points about the exponential level of difficulty Apple is facing if they truly unveil a tablet computer device, as most everyone on the planet now expects:
We were expecting very simple things from Apple conceptually for the iPhone: make a better phone, and add in a good iPod. Apple delivered something much more of course, but the hurdle was a lot lower.
I completely agree. And part of the solution to Apple’s challenge is going to rest on their marketing. Apple’s marketing has been consistently groundbreaking, high-quality and memorable. The Get a Mac ad campaign is one of the most memorable of any company in the last few years, and the iPhone commercials have stood out from the pack with their quality, simplicity and succinct ability to get one main point across regarding a device you could write books about.
But don’t expect Apple to simply mimic a style they already use just because it works. This device (if my sources are correct) is going to be revolutionary, and may very well challenge the very UI paradigm my generation has grown up on. As Mike Elgan wrote last week, “Apple is transforming you and me and softening our resistance to the gadget future they envision for us all.” They do this slowly, incrementally, like turning the heat up on a frog in a pot of water. But every few years they give the nob a crank, shock us all, and push the envelope.
If this new device is half as incredible as all the rumors and leaks claim it to be, Apple is going to have to reinvent the way it markets itself. They are not just the better option in the computer/mobile phone/mp3 player world. They are ahead of their time, releasing highly advanced technology to people who are very often not ready for it. Before the iPhone, we didn’t NEED full screen multi-touch devices, or downloadable apps, or visual voicemail. But three years on we are hard-pressed to remember life without them. The iPhone wasn’t “the better choice” for consumers; the iPhone was the next choice, the most advanced choice, and still is.
So whatever Apple ends up revealing to the public at 10am pacific time on Wednesday, I can guarantee it won’t be “the better choice” in a crowd of choices. It will create a crowd of its own, a new class of devices that we will someday wonder how we existed without. This is how Apple works. And this is how technology advances.
The WSJ posted a new article regarding Apple’s (unconfirmed by Apple as of yet, remember) tablet device. Reading through the paragraphs of rumors and speculation is like driving down a road filled with potholes, swerving to avoid each one in turn. Just check out this list of caveats, from beginning to end:
“…say people familiar with the situation.”- “…these people add.”
- “The people familiar with the matter…”
- “Other people briefed on the device say…”
- “…say people familiar with the talks.”
- “…according to one person familiar with the matter.”
- “…says a person who has worked with the CEO.”
- “…but a person familiar with the matter said…”
- “…but people familiar with the company’s thinking…”
- “One person familiar with the matter said…”
- “…people familiar with the situation say.”
- “One person familiar with the matter said…”
- “This person said…”
- “…according to one person familiar with the matter.”
- “…said one person familiar with the meeting.”
- “People familiar with Apple’s plans say…”
Seriously? Come on…everyone knows someone who knows someone, right? This is like a game of “my sister’s husband’s father’s ex-roommate’s kid told me so!”
Here’s the truth (are you ready for it?): Apple doesn’t announce products before they release them. Period. They don’t share research and development projects. They don’t share photos or samples or “roadmaps” for future devices. They don’t say a word. Nothing. Zip.
So…here’s the deal: if someone tells you Apple is going to do something this month, or next summer, or in 2011, don’t believe them. Their source might as well be their uncle’s hunting buddy’s wife’s hairdresser, otherwise known as “someone familiar with the matter.”
I would like answers to some lingering questions in my mind about decisions Apple has made recently in UI and hardware design. Let me rephrase that: I would like to view a few key hardware and software developments through a future-tinted lens. There are dozens of articles that address the practical “now” benefits of these decisions, but what if we instead looked at these changes as signs of a larger change. The paving of a wide road for big change to travel toward us.
During the 2007 Macworld keynote address, Steve Jobs quoted hockey legend Wayne Gretzky. “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” Apple operates the same way, striving to be ahead of the curve, and to be future-minded, rather than trend-minded. It’s the little changes that we never give more than a few moments of thought end up spreading through the product lineup. Remember the first time you saw CoverFlow in an Apple product? We’ve certainly come a long way since then, haven’t we? Now, even an app as essential to OS X as Finder sports a CoverFlow feature (a feature, I might add, that only made sense on the iPhone because of the Multi-Touch interface, which makes me wonder why it’s in OS X at all…).
Many Questions
Why the complete, dramatic change to the QuickTime UI?
It’s hard to argue that the old version of QuickTime would have been frustrating at best to manipulate on a touch-screen device. But this new QuickTime 10 seems less like a redesign and more like a replacement – the QuickTime on the iPhone seems to have been lifted, enlarged, and dropped onto the Mac. I don’t know why, but I would guess that if you were preparing a major operating system for future touch-screen interaction, you would want to make sure the key apps performed like touch apps. QuickTime seems to be one of those applications.
Why the very sudden addition of SD card slots to their MacBook Pro and iMac lineups?
I can’t figure this one out. With Apple’s pro laptop line a favorite among creative professionals, and especially photographers, why would it take them so many years to bring a simple (and common in the PC world) feature to their devices? It is not often that Apple simply makes design changes based on consumer feedback (I can only think of the re-addition of the FireWire to the first unibody MacBook), so I don’t think Apple did this because people asked them to do it. No, I think there’s a “selfish reason” behind the feature. I’d like to know what that reason is.
Odd thought: The MacBook Air shows us the obstacles that removing the optical drive presents. No drive, no ability to install an OS disk. But OS X Snow Leopard is small enough to fit on a very cheap SD card. Odd idea, I know, but just putting it out there.</p?
On that note, why the effort to give Snow Leopard a smaller storage footprint?
It sounds like a silly questions, right? The small size gives you more hard drive space for your photos, music and documents. But honestly, what’s a few GB compared to the massive hard drives you can get standard on a Mac these days? My new iMac came with 1TB standard, and even though I’m a graphic designer by trade, I can’t fathom filling it up.
To me, the smaller size of Snow Leopard means nothing for an iMac or even a MacBook. It’s not needed. It’s “decorative” and “nice”, but certainly not necessary. But if your drive were smaller – say, between 64 and 128GB – then I could understand the benefit of recapturing a few extra GB. But outside of the iPhone and iPod Touch, Apple doesn’t make any other devices that have hard drives that small. Yet.
Why the transition of iTMS to WebKit?
I don’t honestly know much about this question, but I know enough to say that Apple has begun some changes to the inner-workings of their primary delivery device for all content. Apps, music, movies and even audio books – all of it is distributed through the iTMS. And as of version 9.0, the iTMS has begun to take on some WebKit (the browser engine used to build Safari and other internet browsers) qualities.
Are they making it lighter, stronger, and more agile? Are they simply “bringing it up to code”? Or are they preparing it for a machine that would find the WebKit framework more friendly. I wish I knew.
Why the arguably controversial change to non-removable batteries?
Ignore the practical answers you might want to offer. Yes, Apple told us (and we’ve seen in real-life usage) how much longer the life of these built-in batteries really is. That’s a surface level answer. Go deeper. These batteries last nearly twice as long as previous laptop batteries.
But imagine these batteries in a device with a less power-hungry processor. They are flat, so they seem to be designed for small, flat devices. It would be like having a large iPhone in the sense that my iPhone really only needs charged once every two days (though I charge it nightly). It might not present Kindle-like battery life, but a device running on one of these flat batteries could last a couple of days with moderate usage, right?
Why the sudden (and pioneering) decision to convert all video ports to the Mini DisplayPort?
Apple obviously saw some potential in the Mini DisplayPort that others didn’t. So what are those core features that made it worth converting their entire product line? I know MDP can carry sound as well as video. It has encoding capabilities for protected content. It’s footprint on the devices is small. And it’s a more “USB-like” connection, as opposed to screwing in an DVI plug.
Why does the 27″iMac have a Mini DisplayPort that works as input as well as output?
This is a move that doesn’t make sense on the surface. If you own the 27″ iMac, I can’t image you have a more powerful computer that would require borrowing the display, unless your Mac Pro’s Cinema Display broke suddenly. But it doesn’t make sense. I don’t think the iMac will ever be advertised as a “great secondary display” by Apple.
What does make sense, though, is this: Apple is building a Mini DisplayPort into their mystery device, and it can power a display up to 27″. Say you own this mythical tablet device, and you want to watch your movie on a larger display. You plug it into an external display and enjoy the show. But what if you don’t have the cash to buy a random 24″ Apple Cinema Display? The chances are really good that you do, however, have another Mac. And if it’s the 27″ iMac, you’re set. Tim Van Damme’s fantastic post on his vision for Apple’s tablet device is a great illustration of the possibilities here. Perhaps the MDP is the ideal connection format for a device pairing like the one he diagramed so amazingly on his post.
No Answers
I obviously don’t have the answers. But I’m open to discussion and ideas. And I have this nagging feeling that, come January 27th, many of these questions find their answer in Apple’s unreleased mystery product. Only time will tell.
New Questions from Others
Patrick Rhone points out another glaring question: “Why would Apple build the handwriting recognition from the Newton into Mac OS?”
A great post by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball, discussing his thoughts on the “Safari Pad” idea brought up in a John Markoff article.
The line that stands out to me is the notion, according to Jobs, that the iPhone represented “the biggest shift in a computer’s user interface since the Macintosh was introduced.” For Apple, changes like this are shifts in a direction toward advancement and development. They are one-way changes. They replace the old model, over time.
Unlike Microsoft, who dabbles in all sorts of odd technologies, spreading its resources for change too thin, and in the process, weakening the notion of change in the minds of their consumers. The complete and utter lack of enthusiasm from the media and public over the HP “Slate” that Microsoft revealed last week is a perfect illustration. The seek change for change’s sake. To me, that’s a sign of boredom. But Apple is different.
Apple pursues change for the sake of growth and evolution. If and when this mythical tablet device is revealed, of all the unknown variables, I would bet money on one thing: it will be an advancement in the over all Mac user interface model. It will be the harbinger of future changes to OS X, the iPhone OS, and even the classic iPod OS (if that line survives more than a 2-3 years.
And it will be glorious.
As we saw in the aftermath of the Tsunami the devastated much of the coastal areas in the Indian Ocean in 2004, sometimes the only way to truly experience the devastation of a natural disaster is to witness the scene prior to destruction. Below is a simple attempt to bring attention to just how much damage this earthquake in Haiti has caused.
This image, courtesy of Garrett Crawford, shows the Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti around May of last year.
And this photo, from Boston.com’s “The Big Picture” feature, shows the devastating aftermath of the quake.
I speak for many of my friends when I say that your prayers, donations and helping hands are desperately needed. I don’t need to list the many ways you can help – call your local Red Cross and they can point you in the right direction.
After taking a couple weeks off for holiday relaxation, I’m back with an all-new LinkList that more than likely contains a bunch of old news. But these are things I loved seeing, and want to pass them on to you, my faithful readers. Enjoy!
- The New Wet Frog Studios Website: I’m a freelance graphic designer operating under the Wet Frog Studios banner, and gave my site a complete overhaul this holiday break. The updated portfolio page better highlights my more recent work.Check it out.
- ‘The ABC’s of Branding’ Poster: If you love branding and minimalist design, check this poster out.
- The Luma Loop Camera Strap: A great idea for a better camera strap.
- Browser Pong: Exactly what it sounds like.
- Cool Knife Blocks: Practical? Probably not. Cool? For sure!
- IconWerk: The work this company has done is simply spectacular.
- Measuring Type: So cool.
- Gorgeous Letterpress Calendar: Want.
- DashNote: The ONLY way I use SimpleNote on my Mac now is through DashNote. It’s free, but I’d pay if they charged for it, it’s that good.
- My Life as a Religious Parable: This story is so funny!
- What’s Under Your Mask?: Awesome design and brilliant concept.
- 20 Free Mac Apps for Designers: Some gems in the list.
- The Cost of Health Care: Compared to life-expectancy. Wow.
- National Geographic Collection: Every cover, photo, and article in the magazine’s 120 year history, on one hard drive. For sale.
